At least since the early 1980s, when plastic grocery sacks promised to be a viable alternative for kraft paper grocery sacks, these plastic bags were manufactured in layflat stacks of bags and held together by means of a "header" at the region of the bag mouths. Even more recently, for example in Baxley U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,378 and its U.S. Pat. No. Re. 33,264, the inventors employ the prior art technique of utilizing a bag pack header in the formation of their bag packs, see e.g., FIG. 1, item 15. During the formation of packs of bags, a bag mouth and handle cutout remove plastic from one end of a stack of so-called end-sealed gusseted pillowcases. In order to maintain the plurality of stacked bags in a more or less fixed, stacked condition, extensions at the top center of the bag mouths are fastened together so that 50, 75, 100 or 125, etc., bags are bonded together. This bonded extension is known in the art as a "header". The individual tab extensions are connected by a line of perforations to the bag mouth region of each bag. As bags are serially used up at the front end of a supermarket, there remains, after the last bag has been used, the bonded header which ends up being discarded as waste. The header of a bag pack would amount to a significant savings source if a bag pack, or a bag pack and system, could be devised which eliminates the need for a header and yet would not adversely impact the handling of bag packs and/or the effective dispensing of bags because of bag misalignment at the supermarket.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to eliminate the need for a header in the manufacture of thermoplastic film grocery bag packs.
It is another object of the present invention to present a system for effective bag pack support, easy dispensing, loading and removal of headerless grocery bags from the system.